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A Midwife Assistant’s Journey as a Dog Midwife

We’re not your average dog owners.Our six-year-old white German Shepherd mix is cared for by a rotating group of people: me, my fiancé Nicholas and his first girlfriend Savanah, with whom he got Akira five years ago.Akira loves her many parents and we’ve been there for all the parts of her journey into motherhood.

Savanah and Nicholas have always wanted Akira to have puppies, as they imagined (rightly so) that she would make a noble alpha dog matriarch. Over the years, however, finding the right mate, and the right mate at the right timing, had not proven easy. This past Autumn a much loved and handsome stud, Bear, who was born at the Standing Rock Reservation became available for courting. Bear courted Akira for five days until they locked, with all parents present, by the river.

 

Canine gestation is on average 63 days, or about nine weeks. We began to notice the unmistakable signs of pregnancy around day 30, although around week three she picked up an interesting habit of eating leaves off the cannabis plant in our backyard, and then puking them up. As a Midwife Assistant, I found this very exciting, as I could see how she was seeking out the wisdom of plants for her morning sickness.

 

Every week she got hungrier, lazier, and…well, hungrier. She would rip through the trash can, eat whole tennis balls, toilet paper rolls, and had an interesting habit of taking a lightbulb out of the cabinet and napping with it. The first puppy heartbeats were heard at day 49, and a good friend of ours noticed a first “puppy kick” at day 52.

The resources we used leading up to her labor included the internet; Juliette de Bairacli Levy’s book, The Complete Herbal Handbook for the Dog and the Cat; CJ Puotinen’s book, The Encyclopedia of Natural Pet Care; YouTube videos; internet breeding forums; and consulting local dog breeders. Akira was fed raw meat, goat milk, honey, eggs, beef and chicken livers, comfrey, nettles, seaweed, raspberry leaf, pork chops, kibble, and the endless food she would steal from our hands in her crazed quest to eat EVERYTHING! We took her on long walks in the woods, gave her massages, and my fiancé built her an amazing whelping box and den.We were prepared and excited for what was to come.

 

Most months of the year I work as a homebirth midwifery assistant, and my job is to be prepared, well organized, and educated about any complications that could arise during birth. I aspired to be equally prepared for Akira’s labor, and so I ordered books that I imagined would help me do so – they were sorely short on information. As a layperson dog birth attendant, I summed this up from the scant resources: everything should go great if the dog is well fed and exercised and taken care of. If there is a pause greater than four hours between puppies being delivered, go to the vet.

 

Akira began her labor process on the evening of Thursday, October 25th. She began to pant heavily, went into her den and whined the whole night. I did’t sleep that evening, as I wanted to be prepared for anything since I’ve never seen dog labor. Around 11am the next day, she began contracting. A dog contraction is one of the most beautiful sights in the world. The dog begins by panting, then lays back, sucks her tummy into her back in a curve, and lets out a low grunt. Akira continued in this way until around 2:30pm when her first puppies were born. They slid out so smoothly while she tugged on their sacs to help pull them out, and immediately ate their placentas. She licked their faces dry to stimulate their breathing. She had her first four within an hour, and was done contracting by 3:20pm. She relaxed and bonded, and we took naps. One hour passed, two, three, and then four. I remember the vet and internet advice, but we as a team decide to hold off after finding a few references on dog forums stating that they can take up to six hours between pushing. Around 8:30 pm her contractions started again, and she birthed two more pups by 10pm. I hear heartbeats and can palpate more puppies, so I know she is not done. We go to bed and sleep restlessly on and off all night.

Nicholas discovered an online article written by a breeder the next morning, who had found that 75% of breeders she had met have experienced long, safe pauses between puppies being born (upwards of 24 hours). The author relayed her thoughts on how it’s a shame that vets push intervention and unnecessary surgery on healthy and normal lengthy dog labors. Her argument is similar to an ongoing discussion on long labor in human birth, and I set my heart on being smart and aware rather than scared and uninformed.

We started Akira on a dose of raspberry leaf and molasses every four hours to give strength to her uterus, and we waited. At 2pm the next day, she gave birth to a beautiful little puppy, but then nothing, even though I can palpate at least two more. I started her on a 15 drop dose of Blue Cohosh every 30 minutes for two hours, but she was not returning to contractions. I examined her internally, and my fingers in her vagina stimulated contractions, but she was not having any on her own. She was passing blood with no contractions. At that point it had been 48 hours of labor, and my little midwife mind was reeling. What is going on? Is everything normal? What is the fine line between being brave and stupid, and are we passing into stupid? I did as I had been trained, and checked in with the pups themselves: their heartbeats were lower than I wanted. I discussed with the team about going in to the vet and we drove through the zombie-like, Halloween weekend filled with crowds of drunken college students to the emergency vet in Burlington, VT at 1am; deeply sleep deprived and carrying 7 puppies in a box.

 

By the time we arrived I had broken down, crying about the bigness of it all. We did all we knew how to do, but because we didn’t know enough, we had to seek higher care. As a midwife assistant, any hospital transfer that is not an emergency brings me to a deep, softly sad and angry place. I feel so helpless knowing how knowledge and skills have been lost to homebirth practitioners over the past hundreds of years. I deeply feel that had I known what my ancestors knew, I could have helped. Whereas because of the forgetting of ancestral birth wisdom, my hands, head, and heart didn’t remember what to do. Feelings of helplessness and upset drives me to keep learning about birth. I let out a torrent of tears sitting on the vet room floor, but I knew that our team just didn’t know enough to keep her safe at home.

We accomplished what we came for at the vet, and did not need to resort to surgery. An X-Ray revealed 4 more puppies, so the vet administered three mini-doses of pitocin and Akira subsequently delivered four healthy puppies. By the time the last puppy was delivered at 7:30am Sunday morning, Akira had been in her labor process for 60 hours and had delivered 11 healthy and beautiful puppies!

My journey as a dog midwife has taught me much about myself as a birth worker. I felt deeply how nature was completely in charge of Akira’s birth process, and I was grateful to be present at a delivery where rules and regulations did not disallow me from trusting instinct. I learned that when I felt with my hands and listened with my ears for labor signs, I needed to really pay attention. I don’t do it to get a number to input into a chart, I listen and feel so that I can know deep down in my heart that everything is safe. I learned that birth forums are a valuable reference point, as it is an extended worldwide network of birth stories that help to understand experience as part of a much larger picture: it’s a taste of the village when there is no village. I learned that Juliette de Bairacli Levy is an invaluable resource for dog gestation and labor resources, and that I am so glad we took her advice to set Akira up with excellent nutrition, herbal therapies, and exercise. I learned that I am a good fit for this sort of work, and that I am luckier than I can even know to have had Akira as my birth teacher. All the mothers and people I attend teach me birth better than any book, and this labor was no exception.

 

May we all be brave enough to find ourselves in situations that push our comfort zones and expands the collective reservoir of birth wisdom for all our Earth family, human and animal alike. May you be blessed to experience an animal labor, and may you be wise enough to pay attention with all your heart to the messages Nature whispers to you.

Written by,
Joanna Vinton
Midwife Assistant
© Birth Love Family 2018

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The Birth Love Family site is for information only. This website is only for informational and educational purposes. It should not be considered therapy or any form of treatment. We are not able to diagnose, treat, cure, prevent, or otherwise provide any clinical opinions. Please contact your local emergency number or mental health crisis hotline that is listed in your local phone book's government pages if you think you need immediate assistance.

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